Had a similar problem recently when I removed a rewriter from a system my
son had been using.
It was fine when I restarted, and then the C drive just seemed to disappear
gradually, as though it was dying out. It started off by becoming sluggish,
so I scanned it, restarted, and it disappeared completely.
My first thought was a virus, but I have an antivirus installed with up to
date definitions.
I changed cables, thinking that was my problem, and eventually began to
think the hard drive had seen better days. It hadn't given any trouble until
the time I removed the rewriter.
The cdrom was showing at every boot, but it was just the hard drive which
wasn't registering.
After alot of thinking, I decided to give it one last try, and changed the
power supply cables around, and it worked.
Both drives now register every time as they always did before.
My conclusion is that I must have knocked the power cable loose when I
removed the r/w, and not realised.
I would suggest that you double check the power supply by rearranging the
power cables, as I had already tried wiggling the cables myself, and for
some reason it still didn't do the trick until I changed them round
completely.
Hopefully your problem is as simple as this.
Michele Sayer


----- Original Message -----
From: "Derek McBride" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, June 06, 2003 1:19 AM
Subject: [PCBUILD] Missing Drives


> I have had a sporadic problem for 3 months on this system. (700MHZ Celeron
370, 384Mb RAM, 20GBt HD, CD-ROM, CD-RW:-Win98SE)
> One, or other, or both of the cd drives disappear from the My Computer
panel.
> If I wriggled the IDE cables, they came back, so I replaced the cables
with the round sort.
> All was ok for a week or two, then, LO! my E drive wasn't there.
> I switched off and LO!, the E drive had gone, but the D drive was back.  I
wiggled the new cables and LO! they are both back.
>
> Do IDE sockets give trouble?  Never heard of it.
>
> Is it the mother board or the BIOS?  It might not be the cables, but the
re-starts that alter something.
>
> This isn't the first time I have come to a forum with this problem but
everybody thought it was the cables.
>
> Any more help out there.
>
> Derek McBride
>
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